11 June, 2014

I can't think of a label in 2014 that would benefit more from including suicide hotline pamphlets with each purchase than the Flenser. Their back-to-back-to-back releases are a testament to the various misfortunes that can render life a burden and make it worse than annihilation. The most recent dose of blubber-stripping misery is flayed courtesy of the tall, dark, and handsome duo known as Wreck and Reference. All the genre-defying gloominess of 2012's No Youth is present: cryptic verse belted out in nihilistic howl and underpinned by poignant synthesizer. Want overtakes its predecessor with a more robust and disorienting rhythm section, solidifying W&R's trademark brand of incurable depravity.